Strength of dented thin cylindrical shells under external pressure

One of the common failure modes of thin cylindrical shell subjected to external pressure is buckling. The buckling pressure of these shell structures are dominantly affected by the geometrical imperfections present in the cylindrical shell which are very difficult to alleviate during manufacturing process. Dent is one of the common geometrical imperfections present in thin shell structures which may be formed due to mechanical damage caused by accidental loading or impact. In this work, influence of various dent parameters (Dent Length (DL), Dent Width (DW), Dent Depth (DD), angle of orientation of the dent (theta) and Location of Dent (LoD)) on the critical buckling pressure of dented thin cylindrical shells is studied using non-linear static fi-nite element analysis of ANSYS under external pressure with simply supported boundary conditions at the top and bottom edges of a thin cylindrical shell.